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Sculpting Clay Unfetters the Imagination
May Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Sculptures”
Badass dog rides bike, climbs tree!
One of my favorite courses in high school was Sculpture and Ceramics. It was where my childhood delight with Play-Dough grew into a lifelong love of making art with clay.
The course taught me the importance of valuing my creative expression without evaluating how good it is. It’s okay to be playful, flout external standards, and risk disapproval. So what if the teacher said my project was progressing too slowly and I should have used clay slabs instead of coils. My debonair attitude freed my imagination and made sculpting more fun!
About 15 years later, I was at a museum admiring the sculptures when it struck me. I missed playing with clay! So I bought a 40-pound bag at an art materials store and started sculpting periodically in my free time.
This week, I lugged my big bag of air-dry clay up from the basement for the first time in three years. My heart sank when I realized the bag had not been sealed properly, and the clay was hard and dry. I sprayed some of it with water and sealed it in a plastic bag for 30 minutes, but it was still not malleable.
